Monthly Archives: July 2005

I’ve got a big batch of nominations to catch up on. Here are some greatest
hits from the Banned for Life inbox.

Byf would ban:

Outage: A term coined by power companies to sound like a power “failure” is not their fault.

Adam Trotter laments the Dance of the Hours:

Considering he only has thirty seconds per appearance, it’s odd that my morning TV weatherman wastes 10 of them on:

“around the noontime hour“

“through the morning hours“

“during the peak commuter traffic hours“

and so on. If I had all the hours he implies, I’d have time to bake my own bread for my breakfast-hour toast.

Himitsu disdains:

Evil: Evil seems to get the most play when used to mean “people our government doesn’t like, and thus doesn’t want you to like.” The term rarely gets used to describe the “friendly” countries/regimes that have
tremendous records of blatant human-rights violations.

The Superlative: The news is full of the biggest, best, smallest, fastest, strongest, weakest, most horrible, etc. It’s one thing if the thing in question has been carefully measured, compared to all others of it’s ilk
and demonstrated to be the most X, but quite often the superlative is used just to add emphasis. This situation is made even worse when you realize that it’s often applied to utterly subjective or otherwise unmeasurable terms,
such as “most corrupt,” or better yet, “most evil.”

“These make me puke,” Fred Bradford avers:

“juncture“

“at this juncture“

“24-7“

“24-7-365“

“slippery slope“

‘”Christian” anything — implying “good anything”

Judi Burger shares:

I would like to put forward my pet hate: utilise. When did “use”
become insufficient?

Lyle R. Rolfe muses:

What ever happened to said? Now people say “I went” and “he went” and “I go” or “he goes“, for said. And to make it worse, journalists are quoting people saying this. If the reporters don’t do it, I believe editors should pull the quotes and paraphrase with said when they see these quotes in a story to keep the bad habit from being repeated. And it’s not just the youths, but highly educated people who talk this way.

Hatin’ on the hackneyed

Banned for Life is devoted to those expressions so gratingly overused that they should be forever banned from the nation's news reports.

George Orwell put it best:

"Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

# # #

These are my most-loathed expressions:

" 'Tis the Season" at Christmas.

Campaign "war chests."

Downpours that "couldn't dampen the spirits" of all those upon whom the rain fell.

"Play in Peoria" in any story or headline relating to the central Illinois town of my birth.

"The good news is .... the bad news is...."

This site is about what not to write if you write news for a living. It's not about annoying expressions that crop up in everyday conversations.

If Katie Couric's saying it, please tell me about it. If it's your annoying brother-in-law, grit your teeth and be thankful half of all marriages end in divorce.

Don’t miss an update

Banned for Life is totally reader-driven -- which means new stuff arrives either when somebody a) e-mails me with a nomination for banishment, or b) comments on an existing post. Subscribing to my RSS feeds is the best way to catch up with the latest postings.